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Overview

Lilith lyapo awoke from a centuries-long sleep to find herself aboard the vast spaceship of the Oankali. Creatures covered in writhing tentacles, the Oankali had saved every surviving human from a dying, ruined Earth. They healed the planet, cured cancer, increased strength, and were now ready to help Lilith lead her people back to Earthbut for a price.

About the Author

Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006) was considered one of the best science fiction writers of her generation. The Patternist series (including her first novel, Patternmaster) established her among the science fiction elite. But it was Kindred, a story of a black woman who travels back in time to the antebellum South that brought her mainstream success. For years the only African-American woman writing science fiction books, like Parable of the Sower, Butler encouraged others to follow in her path.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Alive!

Still alive.

Alive...again.

Awakening was hard, as always. The ultimate disappointment. It was a struggle to take in enough air to drive off nightmare sensations of asphyxiation. Lilith Iyapo lay gasping, shaking with the force of her effort. Her heart beat too fast, too loud. She curled around it, fetal, helpless. Circulation began to return to her arms and legs in flurries of minute, exquisite pains.

When her body calmed and became reconciled to reanimation, she looked around. The room seemed dimly lit, though she had never Awakened to dimness before. She corrected her thinking. The room did not only seem dim, it was dim. At an earlier Awakening, she had decided that reality was whatever happened, whatever she perceived. It had occurred to herhow many times?that she might be insane or drugged, physically ill or injured. None of that mattered. It could not matter while she was confined this way, kept helpless, alone, and ignorant.

She sat up, swayed dizzily, then turned to look at the rest of the room.

The walls were light-coloredwhite or gray, perhaps. The bed was what it had always been: a solid platform that gave slightly to the touch and that seemed to grow from the floor. There was, across the room, a doorway that probably led to a bathroom. She was usually given a bathroom. Twice she had not been, and in her windowless, doorless cubicle, she had been forced simply to choose a corner.

She went to the doorway, peered through the uniform dimness, and satisfied herself that she did, indeed, have a bathroom. This one had not only a toilet and a sink, but ashower.Luxury.

What else did she have?

Very little. There was another platform perhaps a foot higher than the bed. It could have been used as a table, though there was no chair. And there were things on it. She saw the food first. It was the usual lumpy cereal or stew, of no recognizable flavor, contained in an edible bowl that would disintegrate if she emptied it and did not eat it.

And there was something beside the bowl. Unable to see it clearly, she touched it.

Cloth! A folded mound of clothing. She snatched it up, dropped it in her eagerness, picked it up again and began putting it on. A light-colored, thigh-length jacket and a pair of long, loose pants both made of some cool, exquisitely soft material that made her think of silk, though for no reason she could have stated, she did not think this was silk. The jacket adhered to itself and stayed closed when she closed it, but opened readily enough when she pulled the two front panels apart. The way they came apart reminded her of Velcro, though there was none to be seen. The pants closed in the same way. She had not been allowed clothing from her first Awakening until now. She had pleaded for it, but her captors had ignored her. Dressed now, she felt more secure than she had at any other time in her captivity. It was a false security she knew, but she had learned to savor any pleasure, any supplement to her self-esteem that she could glean.

Opening and closing her jacket, her hand touched the long scar across her abdomen. She had acquired it somehow between her second and third Awakenings, had examined it fearfully, wondering what had been done to her. What had she lost or gained, and why? And what else might be done?

She did not own herself any longer. Even her flesh could be cut and stitched without her consent or knowledge.

It enraged her during later Awakenings that there had been moments when she actually felt grateful to her mutilators for letting her sleep through whatever they had done to herand for doing it well enough to spare her pain or disability later.

She rubbed the scar, tracing its outline. Finally she sat on the bed and ate her bland meal, finishing the bowl as well, more for a change of texture than to satisfy any residual hunger. Then she began the oldest and most futile of her activities: a search for some crack, some sound of hollowness, some indication of a way out of her prison.

She had done this at every Awakening. At her first Awakening, she had called out during her search. Receiving no answer, she had shouted, then cried, then cursed until her voice was gone. She had pounded the walls until her hands bled and became grotesquely swollen.

There had not been a whisper of response. Her captors spoke when they were ready and not before. They did not show themselves at all. She remained sealed in her cubicle and their voices came to her from above like the light. There were no visible speakers of any kind, just as there was no single spot from which light originated. The entire ceiling seemed to be a speaker and a lightand perhaps a ventilator since the air remained fresh. She imagined herself to be in a large box, like a rat in a cage. Perhaps people stood above her looking down through one-way glass or through some video arrangement.

Why?

There was no answer. She had asked her captors when they began, finally, to talk to her. They had refused to tell her. They had asked her questions. Simple ones at first.

How old was she?

Twenty-six, she thought silently. Was she still only twenty-six? How long had they held her captive? They would not say.

Had she been married?

Yes, but he was gone, long gone, beyond their reach, beyond their prison.

Had she had children?

Oh god. One child, long gone with his father. One son. Gone. If there were an afterworld, what a crowded place it must be now.

Had she had siblings? That was the word they used. Siblings.

Two brothers and a sister, probably dead along with the rest of her family. A mother, long dead, a father, probably dead, various aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews... probably dead.

What work had she done?

None. Her son and her husband had been her work for a few brief years. After the auto accident that killed them, she had gone back to college, there to decide what else she might do with her life.

Did she remember the war?

Insane question. Could anyone who had lived through the war forget it? A handful of people tried to commit humanicide. They had nearly succeeded. She had, through sheer luck, managed to surviveonly to be captured by heaven knew who and imprisoned. She had offered to answer their questions if they let her out of her cubical. They refused.

She offered to trade her answers for theirs: Who were they? Why did they hold her? Where was she? Answer for answer. Again, they refused.

So she refused them, gave them no answers, ignored the tests, physical and mental, that they tried to put her through. She did not know what they would do to her. She was terrified that she would be hurt, punished. But she felt she had to risk bargaining, try to gain something, and her only currency was cooperation.

They neither punished her nor bargained. They simply ceased to talk to her.

Food continued to appear mysteriously when she napped. Water still flowed from the bathroom faucets. The light still shone. But beyond that, there was nothing, no one, no sound unless she made it, no object with which to amuse herself. There were only her bed and table platforms. These would not come up from the floor, no matter how she abused them. Stains quickly faded and vanished from their surfaces. She spent hours vainly trying to solve the problem of how she might destroy them. This was one of the activities that helped keep her relatively sane. Another was trying to reach the ceiling. Nothing she could stand on put her within leaping distance of it. Experimentally, she threw a bowl of foodher best available weaponat it. The food spattered against it, telling her it was solid, not some kind of projection or mirror trick. But it might not be as thick as the walls. It might even be glass or thin plastic.

She never found out.

She worked out a whole series of physical exercises and would have done them daily if she had had any way of distinguishing one day from the next or day from night. As it was, she did them after each of her longer naps.

She slept a lot and was grateful to her body for responding to her alternating moods of fear and boredom by dozing frequently. The small, painless awakenings from these naps eventually began to disappoint her as much as had the greater Awakening.

The greater Awakening from what? Drugged sleep? What else could it be? She had not been injured in the war; had not requested or needed medical care. Yet here she was

She sang songs and remembered books she had read, movies and television shows she had seen, family stories she had heard, bits of her own life that had seemed so ordinary while she was free to live it. She made up stories and argued both sides of questions she had once been passionate about, anything!

More time passed. She held out, did not speak directly to her captors except to curse them. She offered no cooperation. There were moments when she did not know why she resisted. What would she be giving up if she answered her captors' questions? What did she have to lose beyond misery, isolation, and silence? Yet she held out.

There came a time when she could not stop talking to herself, when it seemed that every thought that occurred to her must be spoken aloud. She would make desperate efforts to be quiet but somehow the words began to spill from her again. She thought she would lose her sanity; had already begun to lose it. She began to cry.

Eventually, as she sat on the floor rocking, thinking about losing her mind, and perhaps talking about it too, something was introduced into the roomsome gas, perhaps. She fell backward and drifted into what she had come to think of as her second long sleep.

At her next Awakening, whether it came hours, days, or years later, her captors began talking to her again, asking her the same questions as though they had not asked them before. This time she answered. She lied when she wanted to but she always responded. There had been healing in the long sleep. She Awoke with no particular inclination to speak her thoughts aloud or cry or sit on the floor and rock backward and forward, but her memory was unimpaired. She remembered all too well the long period of silence and isolation. Even an unseen inquisitor was preferable.

The questions became more complex, actually became conversations during later Awakenings. Once, they put a child in with hera small boy with long, straight black hair and smoky-brown skin, paler than her own. He did not speak English and he was terrified of her. He was only about five years olda little older than Ayre, her own son. Awakening beside her in this strange place was probably the most frightening thing the little boy had ever experienced.

He spent many of his first hours with her either hiding in the bathroom or pressed into the corner farthest from her. It took her a long time to convince him that she was not dangerous. Then she began teaching him Englishand he began teaching her whatever language he spoke. Sharad was his name. She sang songs to him and he learned them instantly. He sang them back to her in almost accentless English. He did not understand why she did not do the same when he sang her his songs.

She did eventually learn the songs. She enjoyed the exercise. Anything new was treasure.

Sharad was a blessing even when he wet the bed they shared or became impatient because she failed to understand him quickly enough. He was not much like Ayre in appearance or temperament, but she could touch him. She could not remember when she had last touched someone. She had not realized how much she had missed it. She worried about him and wondered how to protect him. Who knew what their captors had done to himor what they would do? But she had no more power than he did. At her next Awakening, he was gone. Experiment completed.

She begged them to let him come back, but they refused. They said he was with his mother. She did not believe them. She imagined Sharad locked alone in his own small cubicle, his sharp, retentive mind dulling as time passed.

Unconcerned, her captors began a complex new series of questions and exercises.

Chapter Two

What would they do this time? Ask more questions? Give her another companion? She barely cared.

She sat on the bed, dressed, waiting, tired in a deep, emptied way that had nothing to do with physical weariness. Sooner or later, someone would speak to her.

She had a long wait. She had lain down and was almost asleep when a voice spoke her name.

"Lilith?" The usual, quiet, androgynous voice.

She drew a deep, weary breath. "What?" she asked. But as she spoke, she realized the voice had not come from above as it always had before. She sat up quickly and looked around. In one corner she found the shadowy figure of a man, thin and long-haired.

Was he the reason for the clothing, then? He seemed to be wearing a similar outfit. Something to take off when the two of them got to know each other better? Good god.

"I think," she said softly, "that you might be the last straw."

"I'm not here to hurt you," he said.

"No. Of course you're not."

"I'm here to take you outside."

Now she stood up, staring hard at him, wishing for more light. Was he making a joke? Laughing at her?

"Outside to what?"

"Education. Work. The beginning of a new life."

She took a step closer to him, then stopped. He scared her somehow. She could not make herself approach him. "Something is wrong," she said. "Who are you?"

He moved slightly. "And what am I?"

She jumped because that was what she had almost said.

"I'm not a man," he said. "I'm not a human being."

She moved back against the bed, but did not sit down. "Tell me what you are."

"I'm here to tell you...and show you. Will you look at me now?"

Since she was looking at himitshe frowned. "The light"

"It will change when you're ready."

"You're...what? From some other world?"

"From a number of other worlds. You're one of the few English speakers who never considered that she might be in the hands of extraterrestrials."

"I did consider it," Lilith whispered. "Along with the possibility that I might be in prison, in an insane asylum, in the hands of the FBI, the CIA, or the KGB. The other possibilities seemed marginally less ridiculous."

The creature said nothing. It stood utterly still in its corner, and she knew from her many Awakenings that it would not speak to her again until she did what it wisheduntil she said she was ready to look at it, then, in brighter light, took the obligatory look. These things, whatever they were, were incredibly good at waiting. She made this one wait for several minutes, and not only was it silent, it never moved a muscle. Discipline or physiology?

She was not afraid. She had gotten over being frightened by "ugly" faces long before her capture. The unknown frightened her. The cage she was in frightened her. She preferred becoming accustomed to any number of ugly faces to remaining in her cage.

"All right," she said. "Show me."

The lights brightened as she had supposed they would, and what had seemed to be a tall, slender man was still humanoid, but it had no noseno bulge, no nostrilsjust flat, gray skin. It was gray all overpale gray skin, darker gray hair on its head that grew down around its eyes and ears and at its throat. There was so much hair across the eyes that she wondered how the creature could see. The long, profuse ear hair seemed to grow out of the ears as well as around them. Above, it joined the eye hair, and below and behind, it joined the head hair. The island of throat hair seemed to move slightly, and it occurred to her that that might be where the creature breatheda kind of natural tracheostomy.

Lilith glanced at the humanoid body, wondering how humanlike it really was. "I don't mean any offense," she said, "but are you male or female?"

"It's wrong to assume that I must be a sex you're familiar with," it said, "but as it happens, I'm male."

Good. "It" could become "he" again. Less awkward.

"You should notice," he said, "that what you probably see as hair isn't hair at all. I have no hair. The reality seems to bother humans."

"What?"

"Come closer and look."

She did not want to be any closer to him. She had not known what held her back before. Now she was certain it was his alienness, his difference, his literal unearthliness. She found herself still unable to take even one more step toward him.

"Oh god," she whispered. And the hairthe whatever-it-wasmoved. Some of it seemed to blow toward her as though in a windthough there was no stirring of air in the room.

She frowned, strained to see, to understand. Then, abruptly, she did understand. She backed away, scrambled around the bed and to the far wall. When she could go no farther, she stood against the wall, staring at him.

Medusa.

Some of the "hair" writhed independently, a nest of snakes startled, driven in all directions.

Revolted, she turned her face to the wall.

"They're not separate animals," he said. "They're sensory organs. They're no more dangerous than your nose or eyes. It's natural for them to move in response to my wishes or emotions or to outside stimuli. We have them on our bodies as well. We need them in the same way you need your ears, nose, and eyes."

"But..." She faced him again, disbelieving. Why should he need such thingstentaclesto supplement his senses?

"When you can," he said, "come closer and look at me. I've had humans believe they saw human sensory organs on my headand then get angry with me when they realized they were wrong."

"I can't," she whispered, though now she wanted to. Could she have been so wrong, so deceived by her own eyes?

"You will," he said. "My sensory organs aren't dangerous to you. You'll have to get used to them."

"No!"

The tentacles were elastic. At her shout, some of them lengthened, stretching toward her. She imagined big, slowly writhing, dying night crawlers stretched along the sidewalk after a rain. She imagined small, tentacled sea slugs nudibranchsgrown impossibly to human size and shape, and, obscenely, sounding more like a human being than some humans. Yet she needed to hear him speak. Silent, he was utterly alien.

She swallowed. "Listen, don't go quiet on me. Talk!"

"Yes?"

"Why do you speak English so well, anyway? You should at least have an unusual accent."

"People like you taught me. I speak several human languages. I began learning very young."

"How many other humans do you have here? And where's here?"

"This is my home. You would call it a shipa vast one compared to the ones your people have built. What it truly is doesn't translate. You'll be understood if you call it a ship. It's in orbit around your Earth, somewhat beyond the orbit of Earth's moon. As for how many humans are here: all of you who survived your war. We collected as many as we could. The ones we didn't find in time died of injury, disease, hunger, radiation, cold....We found them later."

She believed him. Humanity in its attempt to destroy itself had made the world unlivable. She had been certain she would die even though she had survived the bombing without a scratch. She had considered her survival a misfortunea promise of a more lingering death. And now...?

"Is there anything left on Earth?" she whispered. "Anything alive, I mean."

"Oh, yes. Time and our efforts have been restoring it."

That stopped her. She managed to look at him for a moment without being distracted by the slowly writhing tentacles. "Restoring it? Why?"

"For use. You'll go back there eventually."

"You'll send me back? And the other humans?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"That you will come to understand little by little."

She frowned. "All right, I'll start now. Tell me."

His head tentacles wavered. Individually, they did look more like big worms than small snakes. Long and slender or short and thick as....As what? As his mood changed? As his attention shifted? She looked away.

"No!" he said sharply. "I'll only talk to you, Lilith, if you look at me."

She made a fist of one hand and deliberately dug her nails into her palm until they all but broke the skin. With the pain of that to distract her, she faced him. "What's your name?" she asked.

"Kaaltediinjdahya lel Kahguyaht aj Dinso."

She stared at him, then sighed, and shook her head.

"Jdahya," he said. "That part is me. The rest is my family and other things."

She repeated the shorter name, trying to pronounce it exactly as he had, to get the unfamiliar ghost j sound just right. "Jdahya," she said, "I want to know the price of your people's help. What do you want of us?"

"Not more than you can givebut more than you can understand here, now. More than words will be able to help you understand at first. There are things you must see and hear outside."

"Tell me something now, whether I understand it or not."

His tentacles rippled. "I can only say that your people have something we value. You may begin to know how much we value it when I tell you that by your way of measuring time, it has been several million years since we dared to interfere in another people's act of self-destruction. Many of us disputed the wisdom of doing it this time. We thought...that there had been a consensus among you, that you had agreed to die."

"No species would do that!"

"Yes. Some have. And a few of those who have have taken whole ships of our people with them. We've learned. Mass suicide is one of the few things we usually let alone."

"Do you understand now what happened to us?"

"I'm aware of what happened. It's...alien to me. Frighteningly alien."

"Yes. I sort of feel that way myself, even though they're my people. It was...beyond insanity."

"Some of the people we picked up had been hiding deep underground. They had created much of the destruction."

"And they're still alive?"

"Some of them are."

"And you plan to send them back to Earth?"

"No."

"What?"

"The ones still alive are very old now. We've used them slowly, learned biology, language, culture from them. We Awakened them a few at a time and let them live their lives here in different parts of the ship while you slept."

"Slept...Jdahya, how long have I slept?"

He walked across the room to the table platform, put one many-fingered hand on it, and boosted himself up. Legs drawn against his body, he walked easily on his hands to the center of the platform. The whole series of movements was so fluid and natural, yet so alien that it fascinated her.

Abruptly she realized he was several feet closer to her. She leaped away. Then, feeling utterly foolish, she tried to come back. He had folded himself compactly into an uncomfortable-looking seated position. He ignored her sudden-moveexcept for his head tentacles which all swept toward her as though in a wind. He seemed to watch as she inched back to the bed. Could a being with sensory tentacles instead of eyes watch?

When she had come as close to him as she could, she stopped and sat on the floor. It was all she could do to stay where she was. She drew her knees up against her chest and hugged them to her tightly.

"I don't understand why I'm so. . . afraid of you," she whispered. "Of the way you look, I mean. You're not that different. There areor werelife forms on Earth that looked a little like you."

He said nothing.

She looked at him sharply, fearing he had fallen into one of his long silences. "Is it something you're doing?" she demanded, "something I don't know about?"

"I'm here to teach you to be comfortable with us," he said. "You're doing very well."

She did not feel she was doing well at all. "What have others done?"

"Several have tried to kill me."

She swallowed. It amazed her that they had been able to bring themselves to touch him. "What did you do to them?"

"For trying to kill me?"

"No, beforeto incite them."

"No more than I'm doing to you now."

"I don't understand." She made herself stare at him. "Can you really see?"

"Very well."

"Colors? Depth?"

"Yes."

Yet it was true that he had no eyes. She could see now that there were only dark patches where tentacles grew thickly. The same with the sides of his head where ears should have been. And there were openings at his throat. And the tentacles around them didn't look as dark as the others. Murkily translucent, pale gray worms.

In fact," he said, "you should be aware that I can see wherever I have tentaclesand I can see whether I seem to notice or not. I can't not see."

That sounded like a horrible existencenot to be able to close one's eyes, sink into the private darkness behind one's own eyelids. "Don't you sleep?"

"Yes. But not the way you do."

She shifted suddenly from the subject of his sleeping to her own. "You never told me how long you kept me asleep."

"About...two hundred and fifty of your years."

This was more than she could assimilate at once. She said nothing for so long that he broke the silence.

"Something went wrong when you were first Awakened. I heard about it from several people. Someone handled you badlyunderestimated you. You are like us in some ways, but you were thought to be like your military people hidden underground. They refused to talk to us too. At first. You were left asleep for about fifty years after that first mistake."

She crept to the bed, worms or no worms, and leaned against the end of it. "I'd always thought my Awakenings might be years apart, but I didn't really believe it."

"You were like your world. You needed time to heal. And we needed time to learn more about your kind." He paused. "We didn't know what to think when some of your people killed themselves. Some of us believed it was because they had been left out of the mass suicidethat they simply wanted to finish the dying. Others said it was because we kept them isolated. We began putting two or more together, and many injured or killed one another. Isolation cost fewer lives."

These last words touched a memory in her. "Jdahya?" she said.

The tentacles down the sides of his face wavered, looked for a moment like dark, muttonchop whiskers.

"At one point a little boy was put in with me. His name was Sharad. What happened to him?"

He said nothing for a moment, then all his tentacles stretched themselves upward. Someone spoke to him from above in the usual way and in a voice much like his own, but this time in a foreign language, choppy and fast.

"My relative will find out," he told her. "Sharad is almost certainly well, though he may not be a child any longer."

"You've let children grow up and grow old?"

"A few, yes. But they've lived among us. We haven't isolated them."

"You shouldn't have isolated any of us unless your purpose was to drive us insane. You almost succeeded with me more than once. Humans need one another."

His tentacles writhed repulsively. "We know. I wouldn't have cared to endure as much solitude as you have. But we had no skill at grouping humans in ways that suited them."

"But Sharad and I"

"He may have had parents, Lilith."

Someone spoke from above, in English this time. "The boy has parents and a sister. He's asleep with them, and he's still very young." There was a pause. "Lilith, what language did he speak?"

"I don't know," Lilith said. "Either he was too young to tell me or he tried and I didn't understand. I think he must have been East Indian, thoughif that means anything to you."

"Others know. I was only curious."

"You're sure he's all right?"

"He's well."

She felt reassured at that and immediately questioned the emotion. Why should one more anonymous voice telling her everything was fine reassure her?

"Can I see him?" she asked.

"Jdahya?" the voice said.

Jdahya turned toward her. "You'll be able to see him when you can walk among us without panic. This is your last isolation room. When you're ready, I'll take you outside."

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Engrossing! There is much to reflect on here - the inherent viciousness of much human behaviour, coupled with a naive belief in our own 'unique specialness' and the way in which our short lifespans make it difficult for us to learn from our history or avoid the mistakes of the past; On the part of the Oankali, a similar conceit in being certain that their assessment of genetic qualities is all that is needed to fully understand others, and a blindness to their own fatal contradictions including their inability to imagine themselves in the place of those others; It challenges the commonly held ideas of 'progress' that modern/western society has about sophistication or civilisation being synonymous with 'advanced' material technology, yet the otherwise 'primitive' Oankali surf deep space, assimilate other species and strip entire planets using only a detailed genetic understanding and adaptability as well as their own version of 'Free Trade'. Socially, the book & Xenogenesis series also reveals from the increasingly desperate reactions of the 'human resisters' how fundamentally important children/offspring are in giving our lives purpose (a fact that is often glossed over in today's technological society, but still appreciated in several indigenous ones) There is much else - about the nature of gender, domination, compassion, power and community - that is insightfully woven into the characters and storyline as commented on by other reviewers. But perhaps it is Butler's treatment of human and alien sexuality that is most unusual and haunting and lingers well after you finish the book/series. Butler is an accomplished and original writer who grounds aspects of her most memorable characters and storylines on mythic African themes - the importance and interconnections between spirituality, human relationships and science - or using the scholar, Charles Finch's term, 'The reunification of myth & science' as a basis for the future. My only gripe with her work is that the books are too short, and the endings often unresolved, but this is perhaps linked to her sparse prose style and wish to explore the storylines further elsewhere.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I admit...I love the presence of Octavia Butler. I loved what she stood for, creating complex characters, particularly Black women, in thought provoking worlds, in Speculative Fiction and SFF no less. But up until now, I haven't actually read her work. This has now changed with &quot;Dawn&quot; first book in the Xenogenesis series.
Before I go further, I'd like to warn anyone who is disturbed easily, this may not be a book for you. While it will take your mind to a place it may not have been, this book challenges boundaries, human rights, reproductive rights, and deals with rape, violence and many other subjects that may cause you discomfort. This is not for the weak stomached.
Dawn follows the exploits of a woman named &quot;Lilith Iyapo&quot; a black woman, who survived a human induced nuclear war. She has been kept alive(amongst other humans) by a race of extraterrestrials known as the &quot;Oankali.&quot; The wake her up, because they find she has qualities that may be useful, as they are planning to bring a select amount of humans back to their newly constructable Earth(as before this, it was inhabitable).
As far as plot goes, the story is intriguing. I found that I enjoyed not only it's pacing but it's world-building as well. Lilith amongst other humans were held capture on a living organism the Oankali referred to as their ship. Many, including Lilith, thought it may just have just be Earth, and they were being played.
The Oankali were a complex race. Many things they would say, or refuse to say, made absolutely perfect sense to them, but didnt to Lilith, which I often found didnt make sense to me either. Consistency levels for me were off and on. It was difficult to rely on the race holding the humans captive. Apparently they are a race incapable of deception, but they had no issue omitting truths as well.
The character development was amazing. Lilith was a woman who was intelligent, strong willed and often must negotiate through poor options. Lilith is a black woman, which I should mention, at the time when this was published in 1987, was about as rare as a transparent french fry. She was forced to accept the Oankali, despite how uncomfortably disturbing it was to look at them.
The Oankali I should mention, were an incredibly difficult, yet repulsive race to look at. She mentioned the had a sea slug appearance, as many were covered in grey &quot;tentacles&quot; but I cant lie, my imagination is powerful. It imagined things that made my skin absolutely want to just crawl inside out or completely rip off. Others might not have this issue, but I was picturing creatures so disgusting, I wanted to put the book down many times when certain situations occurred.
Althought she met Jdahya first, a male Oankali, she laters bonds with the Ooloi Nakanj as &quot;It&quot; is a child. The Oankali have three sexes. Male, Female and Ooloi, a sexless sex. As disturbing as it was overtime Lilith later became a companion, and somewhat unwilling lover of Nakanj.
I think the backstory of the Oankali is strong, but I still had questions to what caused and resulted in the death of humanity. It's suggested to be nuclear, and between the US and Russia, but I just would've liked more incite on that.
Many of the conflict came from the hold the Oankali had on humanity. While they described humanity as hierarchical and intelligent, which I agree, are a somewhat lethal combination, as humanity has never been satisfied unless they've been able to assert authority and dominance over others, driven by the need to conquer and control others. But The Oankali is a way did this as well. They were driven by their desire to heal humans, and wanted humanity to live. But the options they gave, solitary life abroad their ship, death or interbreed were so limited. They made humanity completely dependent on them, and when asked why, they gave answers only when they wished it, and gave answers that made sense to them only.
They mirror slave owners by their complete dominance over humanity. They controlled what they ate, how they lived(or didnt live, through keeping them asleep in suspended animation)their ability to conceive, and practiced many experiments on them without their consent. The worse part about this control, was they had no respect for human boundaries. Oolois including Lilith's companion often performed a type of mental rape. They would feed images into the minds of the humans they touched and bonded with, and feed off the sexual arousal. Humans often developed a type of Stockholm's syndrome, but were completely disgusted by the behavior as well. Many had to be drugged to even allow this. This behavior was normal for Ooloi, but they didn't seem to understand that humans were not prepared for this kind of bonding. That in itself is very disturbing. i kept thinking, I must be sick in the head because I just couldn't stop reading.
I find that the unique perspective makes the story that much more normal, that it could happen to any of us.
I saw grammatical errors, but I don't think they brought the story down. But I did notice at least 4. But other than that it is edited rather well, and Octavia's written style, dare I say, draws you in, even when you're disturbed. The point of view is clear, and the beats between dialogue give you a little extra time to soak things in.
About diversity. Between the Humans, there was Lilith a dark skinned black woman, a minor character named Paul, a human man of the same race, and John, a Canadian originally born in Hong Kong, while I assume by the descriptions of pale skin, and European surnames that many else of the people were white.
Maybe it's not unrealstic, I just wish there had been more people of color. One of the first things the white guys wanted to target when they were awaken and stirred up based on their situation, was the Asian guy. Perhaps if there had been more people of color, the white people wouldnt have been so quick to assert their dominance.
I found that Lilith and John were sweet. I didn't expect so see a black woman, with an Asian man in a book written over 25 years ago. Perhaps it was because they were the only people of color, but they fit well together. I think the diversity is acceptable, but it could've been more.
Their definitely believable, and I found many of what they went through unforced. The efforts to empower both a black woman and an Asian man were strong, as we both tend to be the images least represented in the media.
As far as cover art goes, the book I bought, while it shows a Black woman, it inst a comprehensible image to what the story is about. Those looking for a romance book in this specific cover, will not find that. The title is just okay, I wasn't sure why exactly it was called Dawn. Maybe because it was the dawn of a new age for both Oankali and Humans. Outside of the crazy names of the Oankali(names too long to remember or write out) Lilith and Tate's names were the standouts for me. This was written in the 80's so I suppose I could give it a pass, as many of the names for the humans may have been popular at the time. I wont give the point however for character descriptions, because I had no sense of what Lilith looked like outside of being tall, in shape and dark skinned. When she described the Oankali, she was descriptive which I painfully regret. But the humans often got about a sentence or less into what they looked like.
Overall, I can see why Octavia has connected with so many, and she is highly worthy of this praise. I have about 4 more books of hers that will definitely be dusted off and read upon reading this, as I look forward to her other books.

Guest

More than 1 year ago

I read alot of books and plan to keep reading one a day as usual, but yesturday I reached pure gold with this one. I've read serveral things by Ms. Butler, and this one yet again makes me glad I can still find authors that are epitomies of our time.

MoniqueReads on LibraryThing

5 months ago

Dawn is a rather simple book. At least the writing is but the simplicity in the writing magnifies the talent of Butler. As someone who normally would never normally read a book catogorized as science fiction, the fact that Butler was able to trap my attention and make the story more about space aliens and a destroyed earth, shows her talent.Dawn is more than a story about the Oankali preparing humans to return to other in order to procreate a new species but more about what it means to be human and the vastness of human experience and personality. When the story first opens the reader learn that the Oankali have chosen Lilith to train other humans and prepare for the return to Earth. The illusion of the given that Lilith is chosen because of her strength. But as the story progress one thinks that maybe Lilith is chosen because she is easily manipulated and take things at face value.The beauty about the characters in Dawn is that readers do not become connected with them but see them as players in a movie. As a detached the reader is able to pick out bits and pieces of themselves from each character and question how would they act in the same situation.Butler not only questions human nature but she also question how we function in society. Earth was destroyed by a nuclear war, when the story was written in the 1980's the US's major advisory was the Russia. The conflict transcends the eighties and is prevalent for issues the world face today (replace Russia with North Korea or Iran or both).Human beings are more alike than different-dame sure more alike than we like to admit. I wonder if the same thing wouldn't have happened eventually, no matter which two cultures gained the ability to wipe one another out along with the rest of the world. pg. 133There is no real conclusion in this book but Butler ends the first book and prepares the reader for the next one.Pros: Writing, Character, QuestionCons: None

andersonden on LibraryThing

5 months ago

One of my favorite science fiction authors. Her books feature dystopian futures with hopeful veins shot through them. This is the first of the xenogenesis series (a trilogy) about humans becoming a new species by blending with the Oankali (a peaceful space faring people) and the predictable xenophobia that results.

amf0001 on LibraryThing

5 months ago

This book was written in 1988 and feels dated, but is still interesting. There was a nuclear war, followed by a nuclear winter, and some people are waking up in blank, featureless rooms where a voice from up above asks them questions. Are they mad? Is it real? After a time, it is revealed that they have been rescued by aliens, the Oankali, who have 3 sexes, male, female and the genetic modifier ooloi who are sexless but essential for conception to take place. They Oankali are traders, who trade genetic information with the species they interact with, changing and being changed... will they change the humans beyond recognition? It had some really interesting questions and observations but not that spine tingling cleverness of say Elizabeth Bear's Carnival. It did give a good portrayal of the aliens but the sex life stuff was confusing and the mating between humans confusing too... I think it probably gave idea to many books that have followed, but because I've read the other books first, this original felt oddly flat. I will read the next in the series because I am interested in the aliens Butler has created.

ragwaine on LibraryThing

8 months ago

So this is the first in a sci-fi trilogy written 20 years ago. Once again, like -Survivor- this story comes with a very interesting alien race, though this one is much more alien being plant based as far as I can tell and having 3 genders. And so again I was reminded of Card's -Speaker for the Dead-.The story holds up to time well, probably because as with other Butler sci-fi novels, advanced technology is (mysteriously?) absent. Also similar to her other novels the environment is harsh and the lead character is a female that suffers throughout. At this point I wouldn't say I'm getting bored of her writing but I would like to read something "different" from her. I've got 5 more novels of hers to read but 2 of them are the continuation of this series so I guess I'll find out over the next couple months.

clong on LibraryThing

8 months ago

This was a very compelling read. The storyline is fairly simple, but offers several new twists on a fairly old idea. In a post nuclear holocaust world, a race of aliens pick up a small cadre of survivors, puts them into suspended animation on a giant space ship, and starts working on both rehabilitating earth and understanding humanity. The catch: these aliens are a race of genetic "traders." Their way of life is to swap genes with other races they encounter and evolve into a new merged species different (and better) than either contributing group. The protagonist Lilith is a very simpathetic and convincingly drawn character. Butler does a great job of capturing her initial disorientation and later ambivalence as she comes to understand what has happened to her and what she is going to be asked to do next. The aliens look at humanity as a race that is genetically doomed to destroy itself (and indeed the behavior of the reawakened humans seems to prove that they are right). They want to save us by changing us. The humans, on the other hand, want to preserve their humanity and start over. They see the aliens as captors and executioners of the human race. Sex, gender and control of procreation are central themes of the book, addressed in original and thought provoking ways.

jshillingford on LibraryThing

8 months ago

The Xenogenesis trilogy is reminiscent of Stranger in a Strange Land and Octavia Butler is a writer of the same calibur as Robert Heinlein. Her writing is complex, fully fleshed out and engrossing. I cared about the characters, was sometimes disturbed by the story, and completely sucked into her world. I read this Trilogy in a couple of days. Mankind brought itself to the edge of extinction with nuclear holocaust. It is at this moment that the Oankali, an alien race, decide to make contact to help us. When Lilith Iyapo is "awakened," she finds that she has been chosen to revive her fellow humans in small groups & train them to survive in the wilderness that earth has become. But the aliens cannot help humanity without altering it forever. Our salvation may also be our destruction. Excellent!

stubbyfingers on LibraryThing

8 months ago

I loved this book! It was full of very interesting ideas. I was totally absorbed by it.

leld on LibraryThing

9 months ago

Truly "alien" aliens and a struggle to retain humanity, while having to change for survival.

Griff69

More than 1 year ago

There is something embedded in the first two pages of the e-book that attempts to download and install some sort of application. I don't know how good the writing is, but I do know that I do not expect my books to try to install some malware crap when I open them. Shame on B&N and shame on the publisher

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Great book! Complex and interesting,it will make you think.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

A treasured part of my home library. Writing that makes you think AND feel.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I have read some of her earlier works and she has NOT lost her touch. I am looking forward to reading ADULTHOOD RITES and IMAGO in this trilogy. The concept of mixing an alien species with a Terran species is quite interesring.!!!

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

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Guest

More than 1 year ago

Butler does an incredible job of making the problems and struggles of the characters relate directly to the reader. I am not a fan of the science-fiction genre, but I was immediately impressed with Butler's style and wit. This novel should be enjoyable, but also heart-wrenching and lead to many questions of humanity and the direction it is going. This is one of the best books I have read in a long time, so well done, Butler is absolutely masterful.

Guest

More than 1 year ago

I loved this book. It took to me another world. I could picture the whole scene and as ugly as it was painted at times it was always beautiful in my mind the way I could see it. This was my first book from her and she absolutely fed me what I have been craving from all books and that is imagination and most of all pure, crisp,touchable fantasy. She makes me want to JUMP into the book. I want more!!! I will be reading all past and present. Chanel Clinton

Guest

More than 1 year ago

This book was so intriguing it pained to take a break. It was not only entertaining and enrapturing, but the unique blend of religion, philosophy, science, and the good old human nature made you ask questions, and desire the next book! :)

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